The Girl in the City (8 page)

Leah didn’t respond until her father gently pried her off of him. “Katherine’s right, L. We need to give her the data.”

Leah nodded, sniffing and wiping away her tears. “It’s in the tunnels beneath the city.”

“Which way, Leah?” said Isaac.

Leah’s father regarded Isaac as though noticing him for the first time. “Who are you?”

“My name is Isaac. Your daughter came to me for help.”

“I’m Andrew,” said Leah’s father. His eyes narrowed. “What exactly do you mean, came to you for help?”

“We met at the square in the merchant zone. I told her where to find me if she needed help. When you were taken, she sought me out.”

Andrew turned his frown towards his daughter. “Is that right?”

Leah straightened her back and nodded. “He was kind to me. He could have handed me over to the police, but he didn’t. I tried to go to Mrs. Nichols first, but she was too scared to help.”

Andrew stuck out his bottom lip and nodded slowly. “In that case, thank you, Isaac.”

“You are most welcome,” said Isaac.

Katherine gave a pointed cough. “We need to go.”

Leah glared at Katherine. Katherine raised her eyebrows. Leah was tempted to refuse to help. Then she remembered the thousands of people who would die if TRACE didn’t stop Transport. She nodded and led them down the street to a nearby alley. “We’re looking for a round manhole cover with a crescent moon on it.”

A few minutes later, Leah found the cover beneath a discarded cardboard box. The iron disk was old and rusted tight. Isaac had to help her lift it. As they removed the cover, a wave of vile-smelling air wafted over them. Isaac pressed his hand to his mouth, coughing. Leah wrinkled her nose and backed away.

Seemingly unaffected by the stench, Katherine removed a flashlight from her belt, turned it on, and clambered down the ladder. Isaac handed Leah and her father their own lights, and they followed Katherine into the drainage tunnels. The ladder was narrow and treacherous, and they had to move slowly. Katherine stood at the bottom, impatiently urging everyone to hurry up. She even waved her flashlight at them as though that would somehow increase their sense of urgency.

Despite the almost overwhelming smell, the water level in the tunnel was low, and they made good progress. Holding her father’s hand, Leah led them down a couple of side tunnels and into the core waterway that led to the edge of the city.

Leah felt a pang of sadness as she approached her secret lair. This was
her
place, her private little corner of the City. It wasn’t much, but sometimes she felt it was all she had. Showing it to other people, to grown-ups, felt like a betrayal, as though she was letting the room itself down. As though he was reading her mind, her father squeezed her hand. “You’re doing great, L.”

When they reached the entrance to the room, Leah got the key to the safe from her sock. “Wait here.”

“Leah,” said Katherine, her voice stern.

“It’s okay,” said Isaac.

Leah slipped through the gap into the storage room. She’d almost expected the safe to be gone, but it was there, waiting patiently for her. She knelt down and pushed the key into the lock and twisted. It wouldn’t turn. She pulled the key out and spat on it, then put it back into the lock and tried again. It wouldn’t budge. She twisted as hard as she dare, afraid to apply too much pressure in case the key snapped. Leah felt panic rising. They’d never get the storage module out. Everyone would die, and it would be her fault.

“Try wriggling it, little one.”

Leah started and spun around, almost falling over. It was Isaac. His blue eyes twinkled in the light of her flashlight. Leah jiggled the key in the lock and twisted. The key resisted for a second, then there was a sharp click and it turned. Leah let out a quiet “Yesss!” and pulled open the safe. The circuit board was still there, wrapped in the gray bag. She carefully lifted it out and handed it to Isaac.

“Well done, Leah. Your father will be very proud of you.”

Leah smiled, and Isaac turned and squeezed back out of the room with Leah close behind.

Outside, Leah’s father was leaning against the wall. He looked tired, and the cut on his lip was bleeding again. Leah hurried over to him and took his hand. “We got it,” she said. He nodded but didn’t speak.

“What are you doing, Katherine?” said Isaac.

Leah turned. Katherine was pointing a gun at Isaac, her lips pressed tight, her eyes cold. “Just give me the module.”

Isaac pulled the board behind his back and shook his head. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Katherine fired. The gun was small, but the sound was still painfully loud in the enclosed space. Leah screamed and covered her ears, too late to prevent the ringing in her head. The bullet caught Isaac in the shoulder. He twisted sideways, the storage module dropping from his hands and clattering to the floor. A patch of red spread from the wound as he staggered backwards. He clutched his shoulder, his face contorted in pain.

Katherine fired again.

Leah didn’t see where the bullet hit Isaac, but he grunted and his legs buckled, sending him sprawling onto the floor. Katherine stepped past him, reaching towards the storage module. Before she could get to it, Leah kicked the plastic case, and it spun across the tunnel. Katherine snarled at Leah and raised the gun. Leah swung a fist, backhanding Katherine’s wrist and sending her weapon bouncing after the storage module.

Katherine lunged towards Leah.

Leah ducked beneath Katherine’s outstretched arms, but as she dodged sideways, Katherine caught her by the shoulder. The woman’s fingers dug into Leah’s flesh. In desperation, Leah turned her head and bit down on Katherine’s arm.

Cursing, Katherine let go of Leah and twisted away, moving towards the gun.

“Come on, Dad!” shouted Leah, hoping her father hadn’t been deafened by the gun shots. Leah grabbed hold of his hand and dragged him along the tunnel, away from Katherine. Leah’s father was slow to react and he staggered, unsteady on his feet.

“Please!” shouted Leah, terrified. Her father’s feet seemed to be catching on every little bump in the ground. Every other step he tripped or stumbled in a new direction.

As they reached a bend in the tunnel, two more shots rang out. The wall above Leah’s head exploded, peppering her with dust and fragments of rock. Her father stumbled around the corner after Leah.

They had to get into the cave system—they’d be able to lose Katherine there. Leah pulled her father down another side tunnel, one that would take them to the shaft that led to the caves. She risked a glance backwards, but the tunnel was empty. Her father staggered, leaning heavily against the wall.

Another gunshot echoed off the walls, and Leah flinched, but this one was further away, muffled by distance as well as the ringing in her ears.

“Isaac,” she said and looked back along the tunnel. Isaac had helped her, protected them both. She wanted to go back for him.

Leah’s father placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s too late,” he said.

Leah turned away, guilt heavy in her heart.

The light from her flashlight sent disturbing shadows skittering across the concrete as they hurried through the tunnel. Then the concrete became brick, and they were at the shaft.

“You have to climb,” said Leah. “The ladder doesn’t go down very far, but there’s cracks in the wall you can use instead.”

Her father peered into the shaft and grimaced, but he sat down on its lip anyway. Before Leah could help him, he grabbed hold of the metal ladder and swung himself over the edge. The ladder pulled away from the wall slightly, and a few fragments of brick broke free and vanished into the darkness below. His feet flailed around in mid-air, and the ladder shifted again. Leah gasped, sure the rungs wouldn’t hold his weight while he thrashed around.

Then her father found purchase on the wall. He let go of the ladder and half clambered, half fell, down the shaft.

Leah took another look down the tunnel, and when she was sure Katherine wasn’t there, she followed her father, her ears still ringing from the gunfire.

Leah led her father through the caves. Now that the immediate danger was gone, her heart rate was beginning to slow and she could take stock of the situation. Katherine had been working for Transport all along. That meant TRACE wouldn’t be able to stop the bomb, and
that
meant Leah and her father had to get out of the City as quickly as they could. But her father was slowing, too. His movements were becoming more and more uneven, and his breathing was labored.

With her father’s injuries hampering their progress, it took over an hour to get to the edge of the rural zone—a journey that would have normally taken Leah half as long. By the time they got outside, the sun was low in the sky, and the air was already cool.

Leah helped her father sit down on a rock to rest and left him while she climbed a nearby ridge. She could see the Wild Ones’ camps, their fires flickering in the ever-growing gloom. There weren’t any close by, but it was still early enough that there might be people out scavenging. If they ran into a group of Wild Ones, Leah and her father would wish they’d stayed in the City.

All the camps—at least, all the ones she could see—were to the north or the east. That meant they could move south in relative safety. That was a blessing. It would take them away from the City, towards a forest, and there were a few abandoned farms where they might be able to shelter while her father’s injuries healed.

Leah took a look back at the City, just a black silhouette against the pink sky. Leah wondered if the story Katherine had told them was really true. Were Transport going to kill everyone? Or had she just wanted the storage module? They’d find out soon enough.

Leah half ran, half slid back down the slope to her father. He was leaning against the rock with his eyes closed. His hand was clutching his right side, just below his ribs. She knelt down beside him and pressed a hand against his forehead. His skin was hot and slick with sweat, and his face was pale.

It was then she saw the blood. Her father’s hand was covered in it, and more oozed from between his fingers.

“Dad!”

Her father’s eyes fluttered open. He smiled, but it quickly turned into a grimace as his body was wracked with a harsh, rattling cough. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and it came away smeared with blood.

“Hey there, L.”

Leah tried to lift his hand from the wound in his side. He winced and pulled her away. “No, L. There’s nothing you can do.”

“But… she missed.”

“No, she didn’t.”

Leah shook her head, and the tears came. “No! Come on.” She stood and tried to pull her father upright, but the pained look on his face made her stop.

“No, L. You’ll have to leave me here.”

Leah’s eyes widened. “No! I won’t.”

Her father gripped her wrist. “You have to, Leah.”

The tears grew stronger. “But…”

Blood pulsed from the wound in her father’s side. A dark pool had formed on the ground nearby. Her father gave her wrist a squeeze. “You have to get as far away from the City as you can before Transport set off that bomb.”

Leah’s father began to cough again. Flecks of blood speckled the front of his shirt. The coughing fit was so strong and so long, Leah feared he might suffocate before he got it under control. When he finally did, he sat there for a dozen agonizing seconds, air rattling in his chest.

Eventually, he gripped Leah’s hand with both of his and took in a deep, crackling, breath. “Please. For me.”

Leah wiped tears away from her eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

Her father tipped his head back against the rock and let Leah’s hand slip free. “Thank you.”

A curl of her father’s unruly hair had dropped down over his forehead, and Leah pushed it back into place. His breathing was weak, his chest barely moving. Leah reached into her pocket and pulled out the photograph of her parents. She smiled at it, then slipped it beneath her father’s hand. “I love you, Dad.”

Her father smiled. “I love you too, L. Now go.”

Leah looked at her father, trying to memorize everything about him. The curve of his jaw. The color of his hair. The dusting of stubble around his chin.

A fresh wave of tears hit her, and she blinked them away, not wanting anything to get in the way of seeing him. Really seeing him.

Her father dragged in another agonizingly slow breath. “Go.”

Leah took her own deep breath and stood.

“L?” said her father.

Leah nodded. If she spoke, the pain would break her apart.

Her father smiled. “You were right. You’re not a little kid anymore.”

Leah felt her heart catch, but she managed a smile. Her father closed his eyes, and Leah turned away, tears streaming down her face.